Bill > HR1898

This bill, titled "To protect the child custody rights of deployed members of the Armed Forces," amends the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to add new protections for parents serving in the military. Specifically, if a court issues a temporary child custody order because a parent is deployed or about to be deployed, that order must be reinstated to what it was before the deployment upon the servicemember's return, unless the court finds it's not in the child's best interest. Furthermore, a court cannot consider a servicemember's absence due to deployment as the sole reason to change a child's custody permanently. The bill clarifies that this does not create new federal court cases or allow cases to be moved to federal court, and it allows states to provide even greater protections for deploying servicemembers than this bill does. Deployment is defined as a movement or mobilization of a servicemember to a location for more than 60 days but no longer than 540 days under orders that are designated as unaccompanied, do not allow family travel, or otherwise prevent family members from moving to that location.